A Comparative Analysis of Homogenous Groups’ Preferences by Using AIP and AIJ Group AHP-PROMETHEE Model

Abstract

Preference surveys often strive to reveal the perceptions of respondents with different demographic and habitual characteristics to reflect the features of a local community or city. How-ever, the target group can be considered a priori homogenous in some cases, which requires an adjusted survey methodology. Apart from the smaller sample size, the aggregation technique of the individual preferences into a global common priority is also different in these types of problems according to the decision science principles. Interestingly, this feature is often ignored in group multi-criteria decision-making problems, especially in PROMETHEE model applications. This paper aims to apply the Aggregation of Individual Judgement technique in PROMETEHEE AIJ-PRO-METHEE via the introduction of a hybrid Group AIJ-AHP-PROMETHEE model, specifically de-signed for homogenous group preference problems, to be compared with the conventional Aggregation of Individual Priorities (AIP). The new AIJ-AHP-PROMETHEE model, which is more suita-ble for homogenous groups, is less costly and less time-consuming than the general aggregations. The effectiveness of this new model is emphasized with real data, surveying university students’ perceptions of different transport modes in the city of Budapest. Results show considerable findings of the introduced model and its general applicability to the evaluation of the public transport service quality system.